LIVE Websites
Two new websites went live this month: GlobalExplorersOnline.com and and Claire Morra’s MoralPuppetry.com/DirtyDogJuiceGang.com. Click the images below to visit the new sites!

New Designs in the Works
This month we finalized the design for Light of Mine and began work for Alpacaville, LLC. We also started building the Pathology Consultants of Central Virginia website (design by Stan at Dayrich). Check out the designs below.

Office Maintenance
It’s tax season, so just like everyone else we are preparing all of our documents and rounding up receipts to send to our accountant. We also put in some new shelves in the office, and began working on a fancy office chair makeover (cell phone photos below). I’m doing some educational maintenance as well, and taking an online course by Harvard Professor David Malan called Building Dynamic Websites.

Looking at this list I feel better about my blog slacking- that’s a lot to get done in one short month! What have you been up to this February? We’ve got plenty more in store (and more blog posts, for sure) coming up in March.

A local restaurant incorporates brackets into their logo, as well as on their website.

Brackets have even been used in my own designs, such as this nav menu for Shear Image.

A collection of brackets turned sideways and displayed as typographic mustaches.

A colorful graphic pattern made entirely of curly brackets.

These brackets go beyond the screen and make a fashion statement as earrings.

Is there a design trend you think needs critiquing? Have a question about an element or style you’ve seen repeated over and over? Send an email to ESpontarelli@GetCreativeWebDesign.com.

If there is one thing designers love it is a good font used properly. When you pick a font to use, do you consider the readability? The lines? The shape and personality of the text? Choosing the correct font is a process, one that varies for every designer, and should not be taken for granted! Today’s roundup is a group of wintry fonts for fun. If you are ordering your Holiday Cards or creating a party invitation, consider one of these fonts to get your message across. Links to download are provided below, but remember to read and follow copyright instructions. Enjoy!

This first font is called Kingthings Christmas. As noted in the text, it reminds me of the classic holiday movie White Christmas. Something about those snow-peaked hills just says Bing Crosby to me. This is a display font that would be appropriate as a header or title, but would not work well for smaller body text.

Next we have Christmas Card, a font that looks straight out of A Christmas Carol. It has a definite Dickensian feel and would be appropriate for a semi-formal invitation or holiday greeting. The old fashioned style makes it a charming but easy to read font.

Krystal is a fun, playful font, perfect for informal use. Again this would be best suited for the headline or title of a design. I like the depth implied by the snowflakes falling in front of the text. Cute and simple!

This next font, called Chilled, is similar in width and weight to Krystal above. There are numerous fonts using snow-capped letters, but I found this one to be the most authentic without being overly intricate in design.

Finally, the last font I picked for this wintry mix of fonts is Mountains of Christmas. It is casual and whimsical; a thin serif font that could be used for body text or a header. It reminds be of a Tim Burton animation with its delicacy and style.

There you have it! A great group of fonts for your next winter project. Do you have others to add to the collection? Feel free to share!

It’s that time of year again! Time to send out Holiday cards not only to your personal friends and family, but to your business contacts. It is a nice gesture to wish your professional peers happiness during this season and good fortune in the New Year. This post contains a small collection of Holiday Cards designed by GetCreative for a few of our clients.

Show your appreciation for clients, employees and others this season with a custom designed card from GetCreative. Contact us by Dec 10th to get your design done in time for Christmas!

The Vintage Junkie is a local business in Lynchburg, VA featuring the artistic talents of Amy Calandra. The Vintage Junkie boasts a gorgeous collection of re-purposed vintage jewelry and accessories, and is Amy’s second business venture. (We are currently discussing a new look for her first company’s website, Light of Mine Designs, as well.) Working with a fellow artist on this project was a nice change from some of my more business-oriented clients; Amy’s input certainly influenced the creative design of the site. Click through to see how this artistic collaboration turned out!

Amy came to me with a vision for a “shabby-chic” website with a “vintage, faded feel” to it. The soft colors and textured background contribute to the look that Amy had in mind. The header font was Amy’s choice directly: an eclectic display font that mimics the construction of her whimsical jewelry. Many of the graphics in the header of the page are original creations, while some are stock illustrations that I altered significantly to fit the personality of the site. Photos of Amy’s jewelry are placed throughout the site, providing both colorful visual interest and a preview of items available for sale. Behind the scenes, The Vintage Junkie is setup with a Content Management System that allows Amy to quickly and easily update the text and photo content of each page.

The main aspect of this website is the online store, where vintage pieces are available for purchase. The site is hosted on a secure server for accepting online payments and includes an integrated e-commerce storefront where products are sorted and sold by category. Above is a sampling from the section of Necklaces, where the subtly textured background of the main content areas of the site can be seen in better detail. For ease of use, the store is maintained and updated by the owner and each product can be customized down to the last detail, including weight, photo, description and quantity in stock. This detailed management allows for smooth transactions for shoppers and accurate inventorying for the owner.

Like what you see? Stop by our online website portfolio for more samples of or work. Or, visit The Vintage Junkie Shop and get some of that holiday shopping done early!

Last year

I put together the above word cloud using Tagxedo in honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, using the text from the NBCAM website and a simple pink font. Have fun, enjoy this fun little tool, and remember and honor those affected by breast cancer this month. Happy Friday!

As I hinted at last week previously, I have a great resource for background patterns to share with you. The simple program for creating backgrounds at BGPatterns.com has become one of my favorite tools lately. The possibilities are endless, with results ranging from sleek and polished to grungy vintage. Read on to see details and more examples of this great resource.

Creator Sergii Iavorskyi describes BGPatterns.com as “a tiny web app for making background patterns in a few clicks.” With an easy-to-use interface, this tool allows you to choose the color(s), design, texture, scale and more of your background pattern. Properties like opacity, location and rotation are also available for even further customization. As you tweak your design it is displayed to the right of the control panel; you then have the options of previewing your design in the background of the site, and downloading the pattern for use in your own projects.

The next time you’re designing a background pattern or need some inspiration, have some productive fun at BGPatterns.com. Have a great weekend!

Today’s Find is a roundup of great t-shirts for web designers with a sense of humor. There’s nothing like an extremely nerdy t-shirt for a good laugh (Big Bang Theory, anyone?*). I just recently discovered nerdy t-shirts made specifically for designers, and I knew I had to share. Below are some of my favorites, with links to where you can buy them. Enjoy!

Which are your favorites? ‘oh, crop’ and the CSS Ninja are my top picks, too funny. Hope you enjoyed these, have a great weekend!

Visit the following sites for even more great t-shirts:
Web Designer Depot -25 Funny T-Shirts for Designers and Developers
SpeckyBoy-30 Cool Web Designer T-Shirts, for your every mood
Design Shack-55 T-Shirts Made Just for Designers

*Bonus material for you Big Bang fans…if you haven’t already, check out sheldonshirts.com for more awesome nerd apparel.

Font Squirrel is a website that offers conveniently packaged web font kits. As the logo states, the hundreds of fonts available at Font Squirrel are completely free. There is no sign-up or subscription necessary- simply visit the website and download your desired font(s). Why should you embed fonts into your website instead of using other methods? I have found some undesirable variations in the display quality of some fonts when using Google’s Font API, while properly embedded fonts will always be displayed correctly. Although an embedded font does take up more room on your web server, it is often worth it if you have the space.

The @font-face Kits at Font Squirrel are for embedding fonts in a website, and they include the multiple font formats, CSS and HTML code necessary for doing so. And, if the website doesn’t already have a @font-face kit for the font you want to use on your website, you can simply use their @font-face Kit Generator tool to upload the (legal) font of your choice. For graphic designers who aren’t worried about web-safe font use, there is an even more extensive collection of free fonts for download on the site.

So there you have it, yet another way to enjoy beautiful fonts in your designs both on and off the web. Happy Friday!

Microsoft’s PowerPoint is a program that, for me at least, conjures up bad memories of monotonous High School presentations. Presentations that, no matter what the subject, all used the same old ambiguous backgrounds time after time. Today I have a roundup of PowerPoint designs that break the mold in the best of ways. These unique and interesting designs will take any presentation to the next level, and maybe even keep your audience engaged! Check out some great sources and how to make your own PP Design below.

WorkAwesome: 20 Free PowerPoint Templates that Don’t Suck
This is a collection of 20 great PP Designs, ranging from modern and edgy to more traditional. And they’re all FREE!

Free Power Point Templates
Like the name suggests, this website is fully devoted to Free PowerPoint Templates. You can browse by category, color or tags to find exactly what you’re looking for.

Microsoft Office: Create a design template
This is the official Microsoft tutorial on designing your own PP theme. It gives step-by-step instructions on how to create and edit your own design.

Design Shack: 10 Tips for Designing Presentations That Don’t Suck (Part 2 Here)
This two-part series goes over the basics of presentation design and how to create or pick one that is both visually interesting and appropriate for your audience.